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Transactions of the Nebraska Academy of and Affiliated Societies Nebraska Academy of Sciences

1980

The Structures of Scientific Relativism

Charles J. Dougherty Creighton University

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Dougherty, Charles J., "The Structures of Scientific Relativism" (1980). Transactions of the Nebraska Academy of Sciences and Affiliated Societies. 291. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/tnas/291

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Nebraska Academy of Sciences at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Transactions of the Nebraska Academy of Sciences and Affiliated Societiesy b an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. 1980. Transactions of the Nebraska Academy of Sciences, VIII:211-21S.

PHILOSOPHY OF

THE STRICTURES OF SCIENTIFIC RELATIVISM

Charles J. Dougherty Department of Creighton University Omaha, Nebraska 68178

Few recent works have generated as much intellectual discussion of their world-view. Kuhn introduced the as an achieve­ as Thomas S. Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Yet given ment or constellation of achievements so unprecedented as to the impact this book has had on our understanding of science-its role galvanize a group of scientific adherents, and yet so open­ in the demise of logical , in the current outpouring of interest in the of science, and in changes in science education - perhaps ended as to permit these adherents to accept the task of com­ it is now, some ten years after Kuhn's provocative Postscript, pleting its promise in painstaking and detailed scientific for still another look at his thesis. That is the purpose of this study. work. The achievements of formed a paradigm First, those elements of Kuhn's book which committed him to a scienti­ in this sense. As the matrix of views within which the disci­ fic relativism are reconstructed. Secondly, this relativism is critiqued from pline functions, the paradigm provides laws, theories, defini­ several rather different points of view. Finally, the position is defended that Kuhn's view of science is suspect because it generates two para­ tions, symbolic generalizations, mathematical and logical doxes, one self-referential and one existential, and because his analysis tools, techniques, instrumentation, and shared beliefs and is considered inadequate both from a pragmatic and a phenomenologi­ values for its followers. More importantly for Kuhn, the para­ cal perspective. digm presented a concrete example or series of concrete exam­ ples for what counts as legitimate effort in that discipline. t t t This latter sense of the paradigm as shared example also con­ tains the crucial philosophical claim of Kuhn's work: that a I. paradigm defines the world of the scientists who accept it and does so in a which cannot be made fully explicit. By now Kuhn's (1970) central conceptual contribution is well-known. The history of science is a dynamic of paradigm­ Three dramatic consequences are entailed by Kuhn's based , progressively elaborating and confirm­ theory of scientific paradigms. First, there are no facts inde­ ing itself; revolutionary episodes, proliferating a consciousness pendent of a given scientific theory. The paradigm defines a of anomaly and innovative response to anomaly; and the re­ world, not a way of seeing or interpreting the world. For Kuhn establishment of normal science based on consensus around a there was no access to the facts directly. Rather, they are al­ new paradigm. Were this the whole of Kuhn's thesis, his book ways fact-for-a-paradigm; they are always theory-laden facts. would have been philosophically non-controversial. Philoso­ This immediately eliminates the possibility of a correspondence phers, of course, knew that science and scientific theories had theory of since there is no separate from the developed, and that that development was not without its paradigm's reality against which the paradigm itself could be own peculiar paroxysms. What was (and what remains) philo­ compared. (Indeed, the very notion of paradigm suggests a sophically controversial was Kuhn's understanding of para­ coherence theory of truth.) digm. Secondly, since the paradigm is not capable of Although paradigm is used throughout Kuhn's book and made explicit, no rules can exhaust the import of a scientific is re-examined critically in his Postscript, it defies easy transla­ tradition. More importantly, since the paradigm cannot be tion into words. It is what the scientists of a given tradi­ rationally articulated in full, there always be non-rational tion share, that which makes fruitful communication between elements in any individual's commitment or opposition to any them possible, and that which allows for successful elaboration paradigm. The decision to adopt any given paradigm at any 211 212 C. J. Dougherty given point of its development is more akin to the commit­ The second issue moves in just the opposite direction. As ment of a political revolutionary or to a religious conversion Kuhn's stimulus-to-sensation model completed his relativisll1 than it is to the conclusion of a deductive syllogism. at the micro-level, so his rejection of any or trans-human natural completed it at the macro-level. If one is Finally, since each paradigm defines its own world, and tempted to read the cunning of into this dynamic there is no paradigm-independent world available to us, the of scientific development, Kuhn scotched the temptation by historical movement of the scientific community from one an explicit espousal of Darwin's conceptual transposition. paradigm to another is beyond rational appraisal. One can The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, like Origin of Species, speak of only internal to a single paradigm; only here "recognizes no goal set either by God or " (Kuhn are there standards against which to measure progress, viz. 1970: 172). Since this is not a teleological process, we shali the paradigm itself. Progress here becomes tautological. have to "learn to substitute evolution-from-what-we-do-know Again, since there is no access to without a paradigm, for evolution-toward-that-we-wish-to-know" (Kuhn, 1970: there is no way to represent meaningfully trans-paradigm 171). progress. Progress here is empty. Furthermore, since each para­ digm defines its laws, theories, and beliefs in its own terms, The world is now well lost. paradigms are not even comparable. Instead, they are radically incommensurate. II. In more traditional philosophical terms, what Kuhn offered us is a scientific relativism. Scientific "" are relative to One of the great ironies in the history of philosophy is a given paradigm. This paradigm is not itself capable of being the of the skeptic who claims to know that we can compared directly with the real. Nor may we assume that know nothing. Unless he makes no positive claim whatsoever, historical development will bring us increasingly more valid or is just plain evasive, his theory refutes itself. A similar paradigms, since no two paradigms may be compared directly. conundrum faces the relativist. If his view is that all truths are Individual scientists and the community of scientists at large relative to some perspective, one may validly counter that this move from one paradigm to another for considerations not is merely the relativists' perspective. If the relativists' rejoinder wholly rational, and where rational, not wholly explicit. If is that truth is relative not only from his perspective but from we accept this position, we shall have to relinquish the notion, every conceivable perspective, he is well on his way to refuting in Kuhn's (1970: 170) own words, that " ... changes of para­ himself by offering a non-relative claim. And to paraphrase digm carry scientists and those who learn from them closer Russell's remark on universals, if you have to admit one non­ and closer to the truth." relative claim, you might as well admit all that you need. Let us apply these general observations to Kuhn's own views. Two more points need to be made to complete our expo­ sition of Kuhn's relativism. The first issue is raised in the It is roughly true to say that, prior to the wide acceptance Postscript. In language which is quite unexpectedly material­ of Kuhn's thesis, the received in the istic, Kuhn offered a finer-grained analysis of the epistemic English-speaking world was that of the positi­ roots of this relativism. Although we all may receive different vists. At least, it is accurate to say that Kuhn himself saw the sensations from a putatively similar , "under situation this way. In the "Introduction," for example, Kuhn of " Kuhn held that we must posit the claimed to be rebelling against a theory of science on which and immutability of identical stimuli. Thus, for example, he was himself weaned intellectually. This theory was char­ three different of an orange by three different acterized by strong separations between scientific fact and perceivers may result in three quite different sensations scientific theory, between sociology and , and (say that of an orange, a peach, and a grapefruit); yet, to between the context of discovery and the context of justifi­ maintain a minimally common world we must, Kuhn as­ cation. This theory minimized or ignored the role of history, serted, say that three identical sets of orange-stimuli were personal factors, and the non-rational aspects of science in present-even though stimuli are the sorts of things which general in favor of emphasis on the rational methods of science can never, in , be known. These would-be things­ and the development-by-accumulation model. Not only was in-themselves are immediately and involuntarily transformed it largely ahistorical, but it was also skeptical of the social into sensations by way of neuro-cerebral mechanisms "fully sciences, and tended to accept the ultimate reducibility of the governed by physical and chemical laws" (Kuhn, 1970: natural sciences to physics. This received view had character­ 194). Scientific paradigms may therefore be regarded as istic laws, theories, definitions, symbolic generalizations, this sort of neural processing writ large, the collective and mathematical and logical tools, techniques, and shared beliefs involuntary physical and chemical laws of the scientific com­ and values. Furthermore, there was considerable consensuS munity. on the achievements they took as their shared examples, Strictures of scientific relativism 213 viz. the work of Carnap, Schlick, Russell, Ayer, the early There is, Kuhn told us, a set of personal commitments Wittgenstein, and others. without which no man can be a scientist. "The scientist must, for example, be concerned to understand the world and The point I am driving at ought to be clear by now. Prior to extend the precision and scope with which it has been to Kuhn's theory there existed another paradigm of under­ ordered" (Kuhn, 1970:42). This concern to know the world standing science. That this paradigm is philosophical and not must be sufficiently strong to support what to an outsider strictly scientific does not blunt my point, since the posi­ appears to be rather tedious and painstaking detailed investi­ tivists clearly viewed their work as scientific in the relevant gations, what Kuhn called the puzzle-solving of normal science. sense and so did Kuhn. At the end of the "Introduction" he Further, this drive must be strong enough to bind the indi­ said of the received view that its various elements constitute vidual and his researches to the larger scientific community "parts of a theory, and by doing so, subjects them to the same and its rigorous standards of professional conduct. These are scrutiny regularly applied to theories in other fields." It suf­ among the considerations which set the project of science fices to conclude this tangent to observe that the primary apart from other activities, in spite of the overall tendency of thrust of Kuhn's thesis is carried by empirical claims taken Kuhn's thesis to emphasize the similarities between science from the history of science. In sum, then, Kuhn's theory of and , , history, religion, etc. science is a paradigm designed to replace the previous posi­ tivist's paradigm. This commitment to know the world as it is accounts in part for the resistence within scientific communities to para­ If this is ·the case, then the full irony of Kuhn's position digm change. The normal scientists of every paradigm period is upon us. Because of his stimulus-to-sensations epistemology, believe their paradigm provides direct access to the real. When and the resultant claim that a paradigm defines a world, there faced with a continued awareness of anomaly, and the is no paradigm-independent fact against which we can appraise prospects of a radical change to a new paradigm, scientists the validity or truth of Kuhn's thesis. Because paradigms can­ experience acute personal crisis. This experience is similar, in not be compared, indeed, because critical terms like science, a quite literal fashion, to the anxiety experienced by one explanation, justification, and the like will literally mean dif­ wearing goggles which turn his world upside-down. Conse­ ferent things to the positivist than they did to Kuhn, the two quently, scientists are loathe to face paradigm change. Never­ paradigms are strictly incommensurate. Therefore, we cannot theless they will if, according to Kuhn, they become convinced even venture to say that Kuhn's views are truer than the that the new paradigm (the new world, if you will) solves the positivists' views. Because there is no telos or macro-level outstanding anomalies and presumably is a better tool for progress in our developing theories of science, we cannot even satisfying the scientists' overarching commitment to under­ say that there has been progress in understanding science. The stand the world. most we can assert is that the not fully rational community of philosophers of science have become persuaded that Kuhn's Now let us insert Kuhn's own paradigm into this situation. approach is somehow a preferable paradigm, and that those According to Kuhn, no scientist at any time can know that who have resisted the paradigm change are getting older and his paradigm is aiding him to see the world as the world is. dying out. In micro-terms, no scientist can ever break out of his sensa­ tions to compare them with his stimuli. On the macro-level, This is Kuhn's version of the self-referential paradox of no scientist is justified in the in scientific progress across the relativist. If his view is correct, it is only correct from his paradigm changes. Now, unless we assume the unlikely hypo­ own perspective and that of his followers. We cannot ­ thesis that what scientists really mean by understanding the ly say it is correct (or incorrect) in itself. In fact we have world is understanding the paradigm-dependent world, we Kuhn's own affirmation of this. He told us (Kuhn, 1970: must conclude that if Kuhn was correct in his analysis (ignor­ 208) that his theory" ... need not be right, any more than ing the difficulties of that judgment itself), then scientists are any other theory ...." doomed to be disappointed. Not only must each scientist continue to face the personal anxiety of various individual III. paradigm changes, but now he must do so without the illusion that something truer is in the offmg, or for that , is As the philosophical formulation of the relativists' para­ even available in an infinite run of scientific efforts. dox is merely the abstract expression of what in its concrete manifestation is the lived inconsistency of a person's life, so If Kuhn's views about the nature of the scientist's com­ the paradox of Kuhn's expresses logically what is an mitment are accurate, then his position generates an ex­ existential contradiction for the scientist. To illustrate this istential paradox. One simply cannot assume what one must point, let us consider from Kuhn's own point of view what assume in order to make the existential to become a it is that makes a person a scientist. scientist. 214 C. 1. Dougherty

N. a pragmatist is likely to see a scientific theory which produces effective technologies not only as humanly better but truer as Having taxed Kuhn with two , I want to con­ well. Kuhn's central error, from this perspective, is the assump_ tinue this critical analysis in two other directions. I will claim tion of a spectator or intellectualist view of knowing. By that Kuhn's work is inadequate from the perspective of any contrast, for a pragmatist, scientific theories are not merely philosophy which takes human praxis to be a central focus and cognitive achievements but, if correct, are also instruments a primary vehicle for human self-understanding. Finally, I allowing us to adapt better to our human environment. SyS­ will offer some considerations designed to establish the inade­ temic coherence is insufficient of itself to appraise the truth quacy of his epistemological analysis from a phenomenological of a theory. The theory must also work. Effective technologies perspective. are indicative then of true theories. An increasing range of predictive and manipulative power over our environment and The philosophy of science paradigm, which Kuhn's views its scourges means increasing truth in our scientific theories as challenged, was largely that of the Vienna Circle, as has been a whole. Otherwise it remains a mystery why some theories pointed out above. Positivism, in spite of its animus toward work and some do not; why, for example, the germ theory , was a highly rationalistic doctrine, relying ul­ led to vaccines and the theory of humors did not. A pragmatist timately on a priori arguments concerning the meaningfulness would surely find it odd for Kuhn to say that he is incapable of propositions, the structure of scientific explanation, the of claiming scientific progress toward the truth while at the roles of reason and emotions, and the like. Against this back­ same time mankind is converting matter into energy, pene­ ground Kuhn's work can be seen as a return to a much more trating outer space, vanquishing smallpox, creating synthetic empirical and human-centered approach to understanding fabrics, and the like. science. Science, for Kuhn, was no ideal structure but the work of real persons with their real historical prejudices and Not only does a pragmatic perspective afford a means of failings. One might expect, then, that his views would be more recognizing progress at the macro-level of human history, but compatible with like Marxism and , it also blunts the edge of Kuhn's incommensurability thesis, which emphasize the centrality of real human activity in his­ thus allowing for a sense in which two paradigms can be com­ torical change. This expectation, however, is quite unwar­ pared directly. The thesis that two paradigms are incommen­ ranted since Kuhn's work remains essentially a history of surate follows from the view that the meanings of the various theory. terms of a paradigm take their significance from their place in the nexus of other terms composing the paradigm. These From a Marxist perspective, The Structure of Scientific terms cannot derive their meaning from direct reference to the Revolutions may be considered a step in the right direction, world since we have no access to a paradigm-independent but the absence of any attempt to uncover systematically the world with which to compare them. For an intellectualist political and societal context of the rise of various paradigms there is no alternative but to hold that they derive their mean­ or the relationship between political and scientific revolutions ings from their cognitive role in the system of terms com­ vitiates Kuhn's conclusions. The lack of any discussion of the posing the paradigm itself. Since each paradigm will be dif­ role of concrete human needs, and the resultant demand for ferent to some extent from all others, the various relationships technologies to satisfy those needs, leaves the history of of terms are thereby altered, and no direct comparison of para­ science divorced from human history; it is as though a scien­ digms is possible. A term like mass, for example, is necessarily tific paradigm were literally a different world that the scientist and radically different when used by a Newtonian and an enters when he approaches the laboratory. Further, Kuhn's Einsteinian. discussion of the tedium of the puzzle-solving activity of normal science seems profoundly incomplete without some If, however, we follow the pragmatic insight that terms, at discussion of professionalization and its relation to class least in part, are tools for action, we will have another alterna­ structures. Finally, given Kuhn's frankness about the real­ tive. A greater continuity can be recognized between two world motivations of scientists, his work is remarkably free of historically contiguous paradigms when the use of the term any discussion of the role of economics in the development as an instrument for action maintains a large core of of science. in both paradigms; this in spite of the admitted cognitive changes. Thus, we can say that though mass for a Newton­ A pragmatic critique cuts deeper than merely charging ian and an Einsteinian is not identical, the great bulk of incompleteness. With the Marxist this perspective would also active uses of the term has remained sufficiently similar to be see the absence of a discussion of technological development compared. And since we can do more at the sub-atomic as a critical lacuna in Kuhn's views, but, unlike the Marxist, and intergalactic levels with the Einsteinian notion, that the pragmatist is likely to see this lack as symptomatic of the one is truer. The pragmatist is unabashed: progress has been more debilitating aspects of Kuhn's relativism. Quite simply, made. Strictures of scientific relativism 215

v. game in such a way as to fit it into our common form of life. Perhaps this is due to an unconscious assumption that such a My final critical perspective on Kuhn's The Structure of fit, such a connection between the scientific world-view and Scientific Revolutions is that of the phenomenological tradi­ that of the non-scientist, must be an explicit one. Rather it tion. Apparently by way of Polanyi, Kuhn has appropriated may have the implicit connection of a family resemblance. what has long been commonplace within that tradition, viz. the of implicit or horizonal . The insight Carrying this same point in another direction, Kuhn's here, in brief, is that any act of knowledge takes place within book seems to try to make just this connection in its first or against a background context which itself is not made edition. Kuhn here was moving away from the positivist's explicit and perhaps is incapable of being made explicit. reduction-to-physics model and into the more human flux of Kuhn, with Polyanyi, called this horizonal consciousness, history and the social sciences. If this was a positive sign to tacit knowing, and it constitutes one of his major innovative those seeking to unite science and the Lebenswelt, the Post­ claims, viz. that the content of a paradigm is not capable of script is a giant step backwards. Kuhn's neuro-cerebral analysis being exhausted by any set of explicit rules. Thus, while a of knowing and his reduction of these processes to fully community of scientists is united in a world, it is a world of determined physical and chemical laws departed dramatically which none of them is wholly conscious, and one which allows from the realm of the lived-world and embraced again the for much divergence in explicit interpretation. Physicists of the reductivist chimera of a wholly explicit physical interpreta­ eighteenth century, for example, would all recognize and tion of experience. respond positively to the achievements of Isaac Newton; yet, if they were asked to state what it was Newton had Finally, from a phenomenological perspective, one must achieved, Kuhn would have expected a wide range-perhaps say that Kuhn's truncated dismissal of the teleological char­ even a contradictory range-of responses. (A more common­ acter of science must be inadequate if scientific knowing is place example might be the recognition of a friend's face by at all co-extensive with knowing in its more ordinary versions. three other mutual friends, who thereafter disagreed dramati­ Our common experience reveals an irreducible telic compo­ cally in their various descriptions of the first friend's face.) nent-a drive into the future, a project for tomorrow. If this is the case, then we simply cannot substitute the non­ Kuhn shared this position with as diverse a group as teleological evolution from-what-we-do-know for the teleo­ Polanyi, Merleau-Ponty, and the later Wittgenstein. It repre­ logical evolution to-what-we-wish-to-know. What-we-wish-to­ sents common coin among those who reject the positivist's know is too central a part of the given transcendence of each goal of a completed system of wholly explicit knowledge moment's experience, and as such, is hardly to be eliminated claims. from science, mankind's best hope for continued and or­ ganized understanding of the world. Thus, from a phenomenological point of view, Kuhn's idea of a paradigm has much to recommend it on this score. In conclusion, it has not been my purpose to present a The difficulty that would arise is that Kuhn was not consistent balanced view of Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolu­ enough in drawing out the implications of his rejection of the tions. A balanced view would have to acknowledge Kuhn's positivist's goal. A case in point is Kuhn's apparent loss of the achievements: the corrective his book supplied to the then­ world. Kuhn spoke time and again of the scientist's paradigm dominant positivist views of science, his emphasis on the cen­ as defining a world for the scientist. Yet surely it is mistaken tral importance history plays in our understanding of science, to say that scientists of one paradigm live in a different world his uncovering of the misleading view of science conveyed in than those of another paradigm. Kuhn's point, of course, is science textbooks, and other accomplishments too widely well taken: a scientific paradigm does focus on certain aspects known to need enumeration. Instead, my purpose here has of our common world; it does call us to attend to experience been that of offering a critical re-appraisal in the hope that the as though we were seeing a different world. Still there is a time is now right to go beyond Kuhn's relativism and its common lived-world that forms the implicit horizon beyond strictures. all scientific worlds. As difficult or impossible as it may be to make explicit the connections between the scientist's several REFERENCE worlds and the Lebenswelt we all share, surely we know in some quite valid sense of that word that the scientist eats Kuhn, T. S. 1970. The structure of scientific revolution. dinner, sleeps, enjoys our common culture, ages, and dies in Chicago, University of Chicago Press: 1-210. a fashion which puts a lie to the notion of a private scientific world. Making this same point in other terms altogether, scientists do not have a wholly private language. The chal­ lenge which eluded Kuhn is to describe the scientific language